
Class L A 1 <? 

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eOPHRIGHT DEPOSm 



FIFTY YEARS OF 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 



FIFTY YEARS OF 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 

j: sketch of the trogress 
of education i^the united stjtes 

FROM 1867 TO jgiy 

BY 

ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 




GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



f\Q 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ERNEST CARROLL MOORE 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



JAN -8 IS!S- 



XCffe SltlienKuni $re«« 



©CI.A479920 



\ 




1867— 1917 

\N THE year 18 6 j Edwin Ginn took desk 
room in a modest Boston office and so began 
the business which has for many years been 
conducted under the firm name of Ginn and Company. 
When an individual or an organization reaches the 
half-century mark it seems fitting to signalize in some 
appropriate way that achievement. Casting about for 
a suitable anniversary memento of our own fifty years ^ 
we were struck by the remarkable growth and develop- 
ment of the school system of the United States during 
this period. 

It finally seemed to us that we could do no better than 
invite Dr. Ernest C. Moore to sum up the educational 
progress of the United States since i86j. We are sure 
that Dr. Moore s admirable sketch of the history of 
education in this country for the period beginning in 
18 dy and ending in igiy will be a welcome and useful 
contribution to our educational literature^ and we bring 
it before the public with gratitude that our own busi- 
ness development has been contemporaneous with this 
marvelous change in our American schools. 

GINN AND COMPANY 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER I 3 

WE LIVE IN A PERIOD OF CHANGE 

CHAPTER II II 

EDUCATION AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR 

CHAPTER III 43 

SOME CHANGES SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 95 



FIFTY YEARS OF 
AMERICAN EDUCATION 




CHAPTER I 

'OTHING seems more certain than We live 
that this is a dynamic universe, in ^^ ^ 
which all things change, for activity- 
is their law. Yet the changes which everywhere 
go on take place so imperceptibly that it is only 
when their effects are massed that we begin to 
note their existence. Something very like a tor- 
rent of change has been pushing life forward in 
the United States since the Civil War, and we 
who are caught up in its onrushing have been 
carried along too swiftly to be aware of the dis- 
tance we have traveled or the speed at which 
we are moving. Francis Galton declared that 
man's work in clearing the forests of North 
America " would be visible to an observer as 
far off as the moon," yet we who dwell in the 
land that that clearing made habitable tend to 
think of its physical features as always having 
been the same as they now are. That same 
statifying tendency benumbs our perception 

3 



Fifty throughout. I heard President Eliot say in a 

Tears of recent address that the last fifty years has been 

^ . " the most prodigious period of change through 

which the world has ever passed." Most of us do 

not think of it in that way. 

Let us note a few of the changes which 
came on the heels of the Civil War. The first 
transatlantic cable was laid in 1866. The first 
transcontinental railway was operated in 1869. 
Bell's first telephone bears the date 1875, and 
telephone exchanges were instituted in 1879. 
The first cable car line was started in San Fran- 
cisco in 1 873. Electric lighting dates from 1876 
and electric traction from 1880. The Mer- 
genthaler linotype was completed in 1884. In 
1885 Daimler invented the internal combus- 
tion motor, and in 1894 the first trial run of 
automobiles was organized by a French news- 
paper. In 1896 Marconi produced an opera- 
tive electric-wave telegraph. Langley tested his 
steam-driven flying machine in 1893, ^^^ 
in 1903 the Wright brothers made their first 
flight in a motor-driven aeroplane. In 1877 
Holland constructed his first submarine. The 



first dreadnought made its trial run in 190.6. We live 
New guns, of long range, accuracy, and rapidity ^^ ^ 
of fire, and high explosives contributed an in- ^^^^ °^ 
strument of slaughter which the combined 
power of mankind is hardly able to keep from 
destroying the human race. If tools are but the 
elongation of the human hand, man's arm has 
been mightily lengthened during the last half 
century. 

But progress in mechanical inventions is but 
one phase of the development of science. Per- 
haps the most significant changes of all have 
taken place in medicine. " Forty years ago," 
says Sir William Osier, "the world did not 
know the cause of any of the great infections. 
. . . Of all the great camp diseases — plague, 
cholera, malaria, yellow fever, typhoid fever, 
typhus, and dysentery — we know the mode of 
transmission, and of all but yellow fever, the 
germs. Man has now control of the most malign 
of Nature's forces in a way never dreamt of by 
our fathers. . . . Half a century has done more 
than a hundred centuries to solve the problem 
of the first importance in his progress." 

5 



Fifty Such are a few of the revolutionary changes 

Tears of which science has ushered in in the brief period 

^ , .of the half century which will, it seems, be 
t due at ion ^ ^ 

known in history as the scientific age. Darwin's 

epochal discovery had been given to the world 

in 1859. Huxley, Spencer, Pasteur, Berthelot, 

Joule, Clerk Maxwell, Tait, and Kelvin were 

at work and Faraday was still alive when the 

period we are studying began. The creation of 

the sciences, always a slow process, had reached 

a period of intensification. 

Science is an active force which infiltrates all 
human relations. The discovery which Darwin 
made has wrought no less significant changes 
in religious, moral, political, social, and philo- 
sophical conceptions than have steam and elec- 
tricity in the way of mechanical assistance. In 
view of its enlarged comprehension and the 
changed attitudes which that enlarged compre- 
hension entails, it is nothing short of exact truth 
to say that in the last half century the race has 
achieved a new heaven and a new earth. 

If we ask how it has been with our country 
during this period we shall find that immense 
6 



social transformations have taken place. First We live 

came the ever-to-be regretted period of recon- ^^ ^ 

, 1 ^- ^1 • J 1 "Periodof 

struction and at the same time the rapid de- ^, •' 

^ Change 

velopment of the farming regions of the great 
West. Then in rapid succession came civil-serv- 
ice reform, great labor agitations, the Sherman 
Antitrust Act, the panic of 1 893, and the wide- 
spread agitation for monetary legislation which 
it caused. Then came the war with Spain, in 
which the United States took possession of Cuba 
and restored that island to its rightful owners, 
drove Spain from the Philippine Islands and 
determined to retain them until such time as 
they might safely be intrusted to their own in- 
habitants, thus forsaking its previous policy of 
isolation to become an active member of the 
family of the great powers of the world. The 
Pacific was joined to the Atlantic, the franchise 
was extended to women in several states, immi- 
grants poured into the country by the million. 
The desert was reclaimed; farm acreage was ex- 
tended by an area that exceeded the territory of 
the German Empire. Industrialism grew, cities 
doubled and trebled their populations, great 

7 



Fifty combinations of skilled and unskilled workers 

Years of vv^ere formed. Political radicalism gained con- 

merican ^^^j ^^^ semisocialistic programs of reform 
education 

were enacted into laws. 

Have changes at all comparable with these 
taken place in education ? Has the progress of 
invention, the advance of science, the onrush- 
ing development of social, economic, and po- 
litical life been accompanied by a corresponding 
development in the schools of the nation? Prog- 
ress in education follows progress in other activ- 
ities of life. It is apt to follow somewhat afar off, 
for the school is a conserving rather than a re- 
newing force. The battle of ideas does not rage 
in it as it rages in the world. Its first duty is to 
teach, and before it can do so confidently it must 
be assured of the validity and the great worth of 
what it teaches. Adults are far more ready to try 
experiments upon themselves than upon their 
children. The young, they feel, must not be en- 
dangered by innovations. Only that which has 
been tested and proved, although usually by time 
rather than by merit, has a claim upon their 
attention. The school, therefore, sits somewhat 



apart from the current of change. Yet there is We live 
a relation between educational advance and in- ^^ ^ 
dustrial and civic progress, and in a democracy ^J"^^ ^ 
it must, in a measure, overcome its tendency to 
aloofness and make itself the responsive servant 
of the public need. This it has done and is doing, 
and, as a consequence, the changes which have 
taken place in education in the last fifty years 
are momentous. 




CHAPTER II 

'O PROVIDE a background for our Education 
|\^ picture let us take note of the signifi- at the End 

^■^ cant educational movements which ;;. .„„ 

Civtltrar 

had been set afoot before the period which we 
are to study began, in order that we may know 
its historical heredity. In Massachusetts localism 
obtained its greatest control over education in 
the decentralized district school about the year 
1827. There were only two functions which the 
districts could not perform. One was the levying 
and apportioning of taxes and the other was the 
certificating of teachers, both of these functions 
being retained by the towns. The school district 
is the minutest subdivision into which govern- 
m ental authority has ever been broken, and under 
its control of instruction public education de- 
clined to its nadir. The process by which the 
school districts thus unhappily opposed the gen- 
eral welfare and obtained a destructive measure 
of local control was at least a century long. It 

1 1 



Fifty brought about the undoing of the town gram- 
Tears of j^^j. schools and provided only very inferior 

r^j . neighborhood schools in place of them. In self- 

t due at ion ° ^ 

defense the wealthier folks here and there es- 
tablished private academies to obtain a better 
education for their children, and in time the 
state aided them with grants of public money. 
These schools were free in the sense that they 
were open to all who could meet their condi- 
tions, but their tuition fees had to be paid. 

But about the year 1 800 an immense change 
had begun to come over the land. The invention 
of the steam engine had started a mighty 
transformation in the life of the people. Do- 
mestic industry was supplanted by the factory 
system. The factories which sprang up needed 
workers, and people flocked from the country 
into the towns. At first the towns were little 
better than hastily constructed camps without 
adequate housing, adequate sanitation, adequate 
police and health regulations. Ignorance, dis- 
ease, drunkenness, poverty, and crime flourished 
in them. Then came the hard times of 1 8 1 9— 
1 8 2 1 , which made conditions so desperate that 
12 



great humanitarian movements took form to Education 
alleviate them. Among these were the tem- (it the End 
perance movement; the labor movement; the ^. .,^^ 
philanthropic movement to care for the poor, 
to provide hospitals for the insane, to combat 
the increase of crime and furnish training to the 
deaf, dumb, and blind; and, most important of 
all, a mighty movement in behalf of popular 
education, preaching a veritable crusade against 
the evils of the time by the creation of tax- 
supported public schools. This is the period of 
our educational revival which after-years may 
look back upon as no less significant in human 
historythan the Renaissanceor the Reformation. 
The names of the humanitarians are on the 
honor roll of the nation. Among them are the 
educational revivalists. James G. Carter is their 
leader and more than any other is responsible 
for starting the great school reform. He fought 
valiantly against the two causes which seemed 
to him to be chiefly responsible for the failure 
of free schools : bad teachers and poor books. 
The state, he said, must go into the business of 
training teachers, and must provide that training 

13 



Fifty without cost to them. He outhned an insti- 

Tears of tution which would do this, and declared that 

e, , . only by its creation could standards of qualifica- 
cducation ^ ■' •' , , , . 

tion be set, and stability, dignity, and power be 

given to the teaching profession. He did not 
succeed immediately in persuading the state 
of Massachusetts to authorize the founding of 
normal schools, but he was the prime mover in 
that enterprise and one of the founders of that 
oldest of teachers' associations, the American 
Institute of Instruction, which took form in 
1829. That organization met in Boston. Its 
membership was composed largely of teachers 
and educational leaders from New England ; but 
representatives from the Middle, the Southern, 
and the Western states were present at its meet- 
ings and gave the society a national character 
from its very beginning. Its purpose was " to do 
something toward elevating the standard and 
increasing the efficiency of popular instruction," 
says the preface to the first volume of its Pro- 
ceedings. "It will furnish the means, by the 
cooperation of its members, of obtaining an 
exact knowledge of the present condition of the 

14 



schools in all parts of the country. It will tend Education 
to render universal, so that it shall pervade every ^t the End 
districtandvillage,astrongconvictionofthepar- ^. ., 
amount national importance of preserving and 
extending the means of popular instruction, thus 
securing the aid of multitudes of fellow laborers 
in every portion of the country. It will tend to 
raise the standard of the qualification of instruc- 
tors, so that the business of teaching shall not be 
the last resort of dullness and indolence, but shall 
be considered, as it was in the days of republican 
Greece, an occupation worthy of the highest 
talents and ambition. It will hardly fail to show 
that education is a science, to be advanced, like 
every other science, by experiment; whose prin- 
ciples are to be fixed and capacities determined 
by experiment; which is to be entered upon by 
men of a philosophical mind and pursued with a 
philosophical spirit. It will be likely to bring for- 
ward the modes and objects of instruction in for- 
eign nations and ancient times and their appli- 
cability to the state of things among ourselves." ^ 

^ From the preface to the first volume of the Proceedings of The 
American Institute of Instruction. 

15 



Fifty The nation now had a parliament for "the dif- 
Tears of fusion of useful knowledge in regard to educa- 
c^^mV^w^.^^,, ^j^^ y^^^ ^^^^ sounded that "this 

education ■' 

country ought to be the best educated on the 

face of the earth," and its educational leaders 
were now organized to make it so. 

Other revivalists of education were Samuel 
R. Hall, who founded at Andover in the year 
1829 a seminary for teachers, a private normal 
school and the first real school for teachers in 
the United States; Horace Mann, the protago- 
nist of public education, who having worked 
with the others of that splendid company to cre- 
ate the first State Board of Education in Massa- 
chusetts, in 1837 became its secretary; Charles 
Brooks, who without compensation traveled 
over New England, preaching the gospel of free 
public education; George B. Emerson, the prime 
mover in forming the Boston Mechanics' Insti- 
tution in 1827; and Henry Barnard, "the Educa- 
tor." They preached the doctrine that universal 
education is necessary to increase production, to 
diminish crime, to prevent poverty, to preserve 
free institutions, and to prevent the creation of 
16 



a caste system, and that it is one of the natural Education 
rights of man. The people heard them gladly, ^t the End 
The pioneers in the West and the laboring men ^. ..^ 
in the cities lent valiant support to the cause. 
Of Horace Mann and his work something 
more must be said even in so brief an account as 
this is intended to be. In 1836 the directors of 
the American Institute of Instruction presented 
a memorial to the legislature of Massachusetts, 
" showing the inefficiency of the means now 
employed for the education of the teachers of 
the common schools and praying the legisla- 
ture to do something for their better instruc- 
tion." They asked it to appoint a superintendent 
of the common schools. Governor Everett, 
however, in his message to the legislature rec- 
ommended the creation of a state board of 
education ; and, very fortunately for the future 
of the public schools of the nation, since no 
lone and unsupported superintendent could have 
done what was required unaided, the governor's 
recommendation prevailed. Accordingly, in 
1837, a State Board of Education, made up 
of the governor and lieutenant-governor as 

17 



Fifty ex-officio members and of eight others ap- 
Years of pointed by the governor, came into being. The 
r, J . Board was authorized to appoint a secretary 
whose duty was to be "to collect information 
of the actual conditions and efficiency of the 
common schools and other means of popular 
education and to diffuse as widely as possible 
throughout every part of the commonwealth 
information of the most approved and success- 
ful modes of instruction." 

Mr. Horace Mann, an attorney-at-law of 
Dedham, who was the presiding officer of the 
senate of Massachusetts, championed the bill 
from the first. His keen interest in the cause of 
education, his activity in many lines of public re- 
form, and his readiness to work without sparing 
himself led the governor to appoint him as one 
of the members of the new Board. "For my- 
self," he writes, "I never had a sleeping or wak- 
ing dream that I should ever think of myself or 
be thought of by any other in relation to" the 
post of secretary. Twenty days before the ap- 
pointment of the new Board was announced 
such a suggestion was made to him by one who 
i8 



was in the confidence of the governor and was, Education 
like himself, to be a member of the Board. Was ^t the End 

Mr. Mann fitted for such a post? He had not been ;{. .,„^ 

^ ^ Ltvil frar 

professionally trained for educational leader- 
ship, but nobody else had been then. He had 
not served the cause of public education as 
had Mr. James G. Carter, who for years had 
urged school reform in Massachusetts. But he 
had served the people most acceptably in a posi- 
tion of leadership. He was a trained and success- 
ful lawyer, a man of great talent, and no one alive 
was more interested than he in the welfare of 
humanity or more eager to serve its helplessness 
and need. Indeed, he was a kind of knight-errant 
of the holy spirit, laborious and self-denying to a 
fault, one of the finest and most useful of all the 
great men whom our country has yet produced. 
"By their fruits ye shall know them." Judged in 
the light of what he did for public-school edu- 
cation in America, the members of the Board of 
Education seem to have been inspired in their 
choice of their secretary. 

The words of the fathers are both interest- 
ing and profitable. How did this first de facto 

19 



Fifty superintendent of schools in our country regard 

Years of \{^^ work ? Of the Board of Education he writes : 

zAmerican 

Education It is the first great movement toward an organized 
system of common education which shall be at once 
thorough and universal. Every civilized state is im- 
perfectly organized without a minister or secretary of 
instruction, as it would be without ministers or secre- 
taries of state, finance, war, or the navy. Every child 
should be educated ; if not educated by its own father, 
the state should appoint a father to it. I would much 
sooner surrender a portion of the territory of the com- 
monwealth to an ambitious neighbor than I would 
surrender the minds of its children to the dominion 
of ignorance. . . . When will society, like a mother, 
take care of all her children? 

When he is pressed for an answer whether 
he will accept the secretaryship of the Board, 
he writes in his diary : 

I cannot think of that station as regards myself 
without feeling both hopes and fears, desires and 
apprehensions multiplying in my mind — so glorious 
a sphere should it be crowned with success, so heavy 
a disappointment and humiliation should it fail 
through any avoidable misfortune. What a thought, 
to have the future minds of such multitudes de- 
pendent in any perceptible degree upon one's own 

20 



exertions ! It is such a thought as must mightily Education 

energize or totally overpower any mind that can at the End 

adequately comprehend it. of the 

Civil War 
And when on the 29th of June, 1837, this first 

American director of the education of the young 
is elected to his high responsibihty, we find him 
writing down a prayer for "an annihilation of 
selfishness, a mind of wisdom, a heart of benevo- 
lence" and resolving within himself, as both he 
and all his sons of the office have such good 
need to, that there is but one spirit in which the 
impediments raised by men of one motive, who 
are incased in jealousy and prejudice and intent 
only upon gain for themselves, can be met, and 
that is the spirit of self-abandonment — the 
spirit of the martyr. 

I must not irritate, I must not humble, I must not 
degrade anyone in his own eyes, I must not present 
myself as a solid body to oppose, an iron barrier to 
any. I must be a fluid sort of man, adapting myself 
to tastes, opinions, habits, manners, so far as this can 
be done without hypocrisy or insincerity or a com- 
promise of principle. In all this there must be a higher 
principle than to win personal esteem, or favor, or 
worldly applause. A new fountain may now be opened. 

21 



Fifty Let me strive to direct its current in such a manner 

Tears of that if when I have departed from life I may still be 
tAmerican permitted to witness its course, I may behold it 
Education broadening and deepening in an everlasting progres- 
sion of virtue and happiness. ... I have faith in 
the improvability of men — in their accelerating 
improvability. 

Such was his consecration and such was his 
creed. 

By 1 850 the New England doctrine of tax- 
supported free schools had been accepted in all 
the Northern States, and free schools had made 
their appearance in some of the states of the 
South. The normal school was from the first an 
essential feature, perhaps the chief feature of 
this great democratic movement for popular 
education. In 1 839-1 840 Massachusetts cre- 
ated three of them, at Lexington, Barre, and 
Bridgewater. Other states soon established them. 
It followed that if the schools were to be of 
the people, for the people, and by the people, 
the endowed academies must be superseded by 
public high schools. The first high school had 
been established by the municipality of Boston 
in 1 8 21. Neighboring towns soon created 
22 



similar ones. Philadelphia in 1838 established Education 
the Central High School; Baltimore opened ^^^^^^«^ 
a city college and Providence created a high i,. ..j^^ 
school in 1843; ^^^ Hartford made over her 
grammar school into a high school in 1 847. 

It was fortunate for the nation that the claims 
of education were so incomparably championed 
at the time when the life of the states was begin- 
ning to take organized form. But for what the 
educational revivalists did and stimulated others 
to do in other parts of the land, the nation might 
have been very different from what it has been 
and will be, and education might have had but 
a small and insignificant part in it. As it was, 
the foundations which they put down had only 
been laid, when the question of slavery and the 
all-absorbing Civil War claimed the attention 
of men, and what they had so finely begun had 
to be taken up as unfinished business and carried 
to completion when the war was over and life 
had once more resumed its proper course. 

The year 1867 witnessed that great resump- 
tion of the nation's proper business. On March 2 
of that year an act establishing a department 

23 



Fifty of education was approved, the first section of 

Years of which reads as follows: 

c, . . Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Repre- 

tdUCatlOn . r j tt ■ j a r ^ • V> 

sentatives of the United Ci tales of America, in Congress 
assembled, that there shall be established at the city 
of Washington, a Department of Education for the 
purpose of collecting such statistics and facts as shall 
show the condition and progress of education in the 
several States and Territories, and of diffusing such 
information respecting the organization and manage- 
ment of school systems and methods of teaching as 
shall aid the people of the United States in the estab- 
lishment and maintenance of efficient school systems 
and otherwise promote the cause of education through- 
out the country. 

That tireless struggler for public schools, 
Henry Barnard, was appointed the first Com- 
missioner of Education, and at the endof oneyear 
in office, on March 15, 1 868, he submitted his 
first report. That report contains priceless mate- 
rial concerning the history of education in our 
country, not the least of which is the speech 
made by James A. Garfield of Ohio in support 
of the bill to establish a national bureau of edu- 
cation which a select committee, of which he 
was chairman, had reported to the House on 
24 



the memorial of the National Association of Education 
School Superintendents. at the End 

There were 76 states in the United States at /. .f„^ 
^ ^ Ctvil frar 

that time. Even the Congressional Library con- 
tained no educational reports whatever from 1 9 
of them. The other 1 7 had raised by taxation 
$34,000,000 annually for the support and 
maintenance of public schools during the five 
years of war. The Census of 1 860 showed that 
there were in the United States 1 15,224 com- 
mon schools, 150,241 teachers, and 5,477,037 
scholars. According to the same census there 
were 1,218,311 free white inhabitants of the 
United States over twenty-one years of age who 
could not read or write, and 871,418 of these 
were American-born citizens. Their number 
had been growing alarmingly. Mr. Mann added 
30 per cent to these figures for " undoubted un- 
derestimates," and some persons went so far as to 
declare that one fourth of the population were 
illiterate. A third of a million immigrants were 
arriving every year, a large proportion of 
whom were uneducated, and 4,000,000 slaves 
had just been admitted to citizenship by the 

25 



Fifty eventsof the war. "Such,Sir," said Mr. Garfield, 
Years of « ^g ^^ immense force which we must now 
^ , . confront by the genius of our institutions and 
the light of our civilization. How shall it be 
done? An American citizen can give but one 
answer. We must pour upon them the light of 
our public schools. We must make them intel- 
ligent, industrious, patriotic citizens,or they will 
drag us and our children down to their level." 
The work to be done in the new era which 
began at the close of the Civil War was gigan- 
tic, but the American spirit had been re-created 
and balked at nothing. What were the agencies 
already in existence which it could employ in 
the resolute fight for internal development to 
which it now gave itself? Public education was 
now definitely regarded as a national interest. 
It is not only the birthright of the child but the 
state's indispensable means of self-preservation 
and improvement. Twenty-six states had by 
the beginning of the year 1867 created state 
school systems and state superintendents of pub- 
lic instruction to direct them. By that date there 
were 4 state normal schools in Massachusetts, 
26 



2 in New York, i in Michigan, i in New Jer- Education 

sey, I in Illinois, 4 in Pennsylvania, 5 in Wis- ^t the End 

consin, i in Minnesota, i in California, i in /. .,„^ 

CivilWar 

Indiana, i in South Carolina, 3 in Vermont, i 
in Kansas, 2 in Maine, i in Maryland, and i 
in Delaware. City normal schools had been 
opened at New Haven, St. Louis, San Francisco, 
and in 3 towns in Indiana and 3 in Iowa. Upon 
the refusal of the legislature of Ohio to establish 
such a school the State Teachers' Association 
in 1855 started one. The report of the Com- , 
missioner of Education for the year 1870, a « 
precious volume because it contains the first 
available body of statistics concerning the schools 
of the United States, reports that in this year 
no less than 369 colleges were in existence. In 
1862, in the midst of the Civil War, Congress 
had passed a bill granting to each state 30,000 
acres of land for each senator and representative 
in Congress. The income from the sale of this 
land was, according to the directions of the bill, 
to constitute a perpetual fund, and the interest 
on that fund was to be used for "the endow- 
ment, support, and maintenance of at least one 

27 



Fifty college" in which "the leading object should 
Tears of ^^^ without excluding other scientific and clas- 
^ , sical studies, and including military tactics, to 

teach such branches of learning as are related 
to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such 
manner as the Legislatures of the States may 
respectively prescribe, in order to promote the 
liberal and practical education of the industrial 
classes, in their several pursuits and professions 
in life." Nineteen states had established colleges 
before the end of 1 8 6 1 , the University of Penn- 
sylvania having been created in 1755, the Uni- 
versity of Vermont in 1791, the University of 
Virginia in 1825, the University of Indiana in 
1828, the University of Michigan in 1837, and 
the University of Wisconsin in 1848. 

If we turn now to the report of the Com- 
missioner of Education for the year 1870, in 
order to learn where the educational battle was 
pitched, we shall find some interesting facts 
concerning the condition of education in the 
several states at that time. 

The first free public school was established 
in California in 1849. ^^ 1869 there were 
28 



73,754 children enrolled in 1268 schools. In Education 
the 1 9 16 Report of the Commissioner of Ed- (itthet,nd 

ucation the whole number of pupils in school /^. .,„^ 

^ ^ Civil War 

in that state is reported as 513,002. 

Though the laws of the state of Connecticut 
laid an obligation upon every parent and guard- 
ian of children " not to suffer so much barbarism 
in any of their families as to have a single child 
or apprentice unable to read " and also " to 
bring them up to some lawful calling or em- 
ployment," the rate bill existed in that state 
until the year 1868, when a law was passed re- 
quiring each town to " raise by taxation such 
sum of money as it may find necessary to make 
its schools free." The first year's trial of this 
measure demonstrated that some 6000 children 
had been kept from school by the rate bill. 
New Haven reports that it has maintained a 
system of graded schools for sixteen years. 

Delaware replies to the request of the com- 
missioner for information about its schools that 
it "is unable to supply reports asked for." There 
appears to have been a complete absence of 
supervision there. 

29 



Fifty The number of children attending school in 

Tears of ^^ gt^te of IlHnois in 1868 was 706,780. 
^ , . The latest figure is 1,246,827. Only about 5 
per cent of its schools were graded in 1867. 
" This small proportion of graded schools," 
writes the superintendent, " furnishes an im- 
pressive practical argument in favor of the 
abolition of the independent local school dis- 
trict. But while the adoption of the township 
system would remove all organic obstacles to 
the general prevalence of graded schools, it 
would not remove the misapprehension, preju- 
dice, and indifference which so largely obtain 
in respect to the improved kinds of schools and 
methods of instruction." In this wise observa- 
tion made fifty years ago, the need for the con- 
solidation of schools is clearly stated and the 
obstacle which to this day has prevented that 
much agitated reform is pointed out. 

TheSuperintendentof Schools of Indiana re- 
ports that although the constitution of the state 
makes it incumbent upon the legislature to pro- 
vide "a general and uniform system of com- 
mon schools wherein tuition shall be without 

30 



charge and equally open to all, we cannot avoid Education 

the grave consideration that there is a large ^i the End 

colored population in the state who have ^ .f„^ 

^ ^ ^ . Civil War 

hitherto submitted patiently to the ordeal of 

adverse public sentiment and the force of our 
statutes in being denied participation in our 
public-school funds, while at the same time no 
bar can be discovered to their natural and con- 
stitutional right to these. . . . Colored citizens 
while hitherto deprived of their natural and 
constitutional rights have been subject to the 
special school tax for township purposes in 
common with white citizens, and have thus 
paid their proportion of expense for building 
schoolhouses for white children. After being 
denied all privilege to the school funds and 
thus taxed, they have been under the necessity 
of levying upon themselves an additional tax to 
build their own schoolhouses and for the entire 
cost of their tuition." This passage shows that 
since that day the people of the United States 
have, in at least one respect, grown considerably 
in grace and injustice. 

Iowa reports that every civil township is a 

31 



Fifty school district and is divided into subdistricts 
Years of yi^\x\\ subdirectors, each subdirector having 
<^merican ^^^ ^f ^j^^ g^l^^ol ^^^^i^-s i^ his district. 

education ° 

It is a notable fact that persons are often chosen 
for these positions without any reference to financial 
ability or even common prudence. Much attention 
is attached to the training in music which is given 
in many of the graded schools. The old practice of 
rote singing is discarded. 

Kansas reports that though "the constitution 
of the state provides that *the 500,000 acres of 
land granted to the new states under an act of 
Congress distributing the proceeds of public 
lands among the several states of the Union, 
approved September 4, a. d. i 84 i , shall be in- 
violably appropriated to the support of the 
common schools,' notwithstanding this provi- 
sion, the legislature of 1866 appropriated the 
whole5oo,ooo acres tofourrailway companies." 

The report of the Superintendent of Schools 
of Kentucky gives an account of the struggle 
of that state to obtain a reform in its school 
laws which failed "through the ignorance and 
prejudice of the legislature, notwithstanding a 

32 



previous decision of the people, by a majority Education 
of 20,000 votes, in favor of such reform. The ^t the End 
common sentiment expressed was, * Give us ^. .,^^ 
better laws and more money or abolish the 
school system altogether.' " 

Michigan reports that " the plan of free 
schools has been in operation less than a single 
term, the legislature having only at the last 
session abolished the rate bill. In consequence 
of the schools being free, the length of time 
they have been held has been greatly increased. 
In some districts they are said to have nearly 
twice the length of school that they have pre- 
viously had. The advantages of the free-school 
system are so manifest that it was adopted in 
most of the cities and large towns several years 
since, the rate being abolished by public vote. 
It is estimated that tuition in the graded schools 
is at least ten cents a month cheaper than in the 
schools which are not graded." 

A New Hampshire superintendent, even in 
that early day, finds courage to protest against 
the study of grammar. "How vague and un- 
satisfactory the ideas which our pupils gain 

33 



Fifty from such terms as auxiliary, antecedent, correl- 

Tears of ative, coordinate, proposition, passive, imper- 

^ , . sonal, infinitive, logical, synopsis, etc." " But 

music," he writes, ** is now a regular exercise, 

the same as arithmetic or geography." 

The superintendent reports that in New 
Jersey there are 696 districts in which the 
schools are free and 634 in which they are sup- 
ported in part by tuition fees which the pupils 
pay. " If the action necessary to make schools 
free is not taken by the legislature soon, I am 
confident the people themselves will make 
them free by their own voluntary efforts." 

The schools of New York were not free to all 
the children of the state until 1 867. The super- 
intendent of that state speaks of its public-school 
system as "but an orderly plan of the people to 
educate themselves." At that time the city of 
Brooklyn had a course of study which was 
divided into six primary and six grammar grades, 
with a thirteenth grade added as an advanced 
course. Promotions were made semiannually 
after "careful examination of all the classes 
throughout the entire school at the same time." 

34 



Ohio reports the number of districts in which Education 
the teachers "boarded round" as 2025. The ^^ the End 
average number of pupils per teacher in the ^. .. 
schools of Cincinnati at that time was 50.3 in 
the district school and 48.9 in the intermediate. 
In that city "the phonic method has now been 
very generally adopted in the schools as the basis 
for instruction in reading in the lower grades. 
Since the beginning of the year the department 
of drawing has been thoroughly reorganized. 
The superintendent of drawing gives regular 
lessons two days in the week and devotes the 
remainder of his time to supervision." 

High schools are mentioned in the report 
from Pennsylvania: 

Exceptin the matterofauthorizingschool directors 
to grade the schools where they can be graded, our 
school law makes no provision for the encouragement 
of higher education. A district may tax itself to estab- 
lish and support a high school, but the state lends it 
no helping hand in doing so. 

The city of Philadelphia reports that up- 
wards of 20,000 children not attending any 
school are running the streets "in idleness and 

35 



Fifty vagabondism. To enact a compulsory-education 
Years of j^^ without other essential provisions would be 

\ , . idle and chimerical. Not unless we clothe these 

education 

20,000 children and place them in point of ap- 
pearance on a level with those who now occupy 
almost every seat, can our public schools open 
their doors for these outcasts of society and 
render them the same facilities afforded to the 
better class now in attendance." 

We find the president of the Board of Educa- 
tion of that city offering this testimony as to the 
unorganized condition of the schools : 

Had the public schools of Philadelphia the very 
necessary and competent services of a city superin- 
tendent to interpret, arrange, and execute our rules 
upon this and other kindred matters of school gov- 
ernment and discipline, how readily could these con- 
flicting views be harmonized and all difficulties and 
diversity of sentiment among the teachers adjusted. 
Let us hope that the time is not far distant when 
councils will see the imperative necessity of making 
appropriation necessary to secure the services of such 
an executive head for the public schools. Our duty is 
simply to legislate. We need a proper officer to exe- 
cute the laws essential to the prosperity and unity of 
the system. 

36 



The fifty years since this was written have sup- Education 
plied many a superintendent to city boards of ^^ ^^^ ^^^ 
education, but they have not disclosed many ^. 
boards of education with as clear a notion of 
their duties as this board member had. 

The references to the schools of Massachu- 
setts in this report of the United States Com- 
missioner of Education are particularly valuable, 
for enough quotations from the school reports 
of the towns are given to enable a reader to con- 
struct a rather clear picture of the educational 
situation in the mother commonwealth shortly 
after the close of the war. The number of public 
schools in the state for 1869 was 4959. The 
average length of school was eight months and 
four days, and 1085 male and 6937 female 
teachers were employed. There were in the 
state 175 high schools, 35 more than the law 
required. There were also 45 incorporated 
academies and 481 private schools and unin- 
corporated academies,in which the amount paid 
for tuition was estimated at $593,005, making 
an aggregate of $3,716,892.40 expended in 
the state in teaching its children. There are a 

37 



Fifty number of protests in the reports of the towns 

Tears of which tell in an incisive way what difficulties 

_ , . theschoolswerecontendingwith. Amonethem 
tducation ° ° 

are such statements as "One fourth of the time 

and money devoted to the schools is wasted and 
will be until parents manifest an increasing 
interest in the intellectual welfare of their chil- 
dren and consider it a duty to keep them regu- 
larly at school." "It is a remarkable fact that 
a majority of those who vote at town meeting 
against sufficient appropriations for a full term 
of free. school are those who pay small taxes." 
"When our churches are magnificent and our 
houses are elegant, our temples of learning 
should not be barns." "To make a child think 
for himself is the teacher's main business. He 
should not aim to cram the memory of children 
with the results of his own thinking, but stimu- 
late them to do their own thinking." "If the 
teacher would teach topics in such a way that 
each mind could grasp the thoughts, instead of 
requiring pupils to commit to memory only 
words, we should seldom be obliged to hear 
the too frequent remark, *I have been over the 

38 



lessons but do not know anything about them. ' ' ' Education 
"Let the school hours and studies be few and ^^ the End 
pleasant, especially to the beginner, lest he ^. .^ 
learn to hate them before he knows their value 
and become a truant before he becomes a 
scholar." "The school in this town where most 
attention has been given to object instruction 
has done more work in the regular studies than 
any other of its grade." "There should be one 
school in town open to advanced scholars from 
all parts of the town for a term of twelve weeks 
at least. If so vast a majority of our children 
cannot go to the high school, it is important to 
take measures to bring some of the high-school 
studies to them." 

In 1868 the town of Fall River established 
half-time schools "for children between the 
ages of 5 and 1 5 employed in the mills." One 
half of these children went to school in the 
forenoon and worked in the mill in the after- 
noon, the other half worked in the morning 
and went to school in the afternoon. Indian 
Orchard had a similar half-time school. It is 
clear from the ages included in this arrangement 

39 



Fifty that child-labor laws are a creation of the last 
Tears of fifty years. 

_ , The city of Boston in 1870 reported that 

taucation _ -^ ' ^ 

lessons in vocal and physical culture have been 

given in all the primary schools. Music is taught 

universally, and its study is considered of much 

importance. In some primary schools thephonic 

system of teaching reading has been employed 

and w^ith success. There are thirteen special 

teachers of sewing. 

In 1869 the district-school system was for a 
second time abolished, but its abolition was re- 
pealed the next year. It did not meet its doom 
in Massachusetts until the year 1882. 

In short, our study shows that though in 
1867 a beginning had been made in most of the 
activities of education, nothing more than a 
beginning had been made. The development, 
therefore, of all the great present-day agencies 
of education — free graded elementary schools, 
intermediate schools, high schools, normal 
schools, the great universities, schools for the 
negro and the Indian, vocational schools, the 
great foundations, departments in universities 
40 



for the study of education, statistical informa- Education 
tion concerning schools, new courses of study, ^^ the end 
a vast literature about teaching, well-nigh the ^. . ,^ 
whole present-day science of education (includ- 
ing school administration, child-study, educa- 
tional psychology, the history and theory of 
education, school hygiene, and educational 
standards and measurements), and very nearly 
the entire machinery of school supervision (city 
superintendents, supervising principals, super- 
visors of subjects, and state inspectors and 
agents) — is a growth of the last fifty years. This 
statement refers to changes so colossal that the 
mere effort to think of them one after the other is 
stupefying, but we have not begun to enumerate 
them all. Our list makes no mention of school 
buildings, play and playgrounds, compulsory 
education, truant schools, juvenile courts, public 
libraries, and a score more of agencies which 
have been developed to assist the school in its 
work. This whole accumulation of progress has 
come about so gradually that it is only when we 
set ourselves consciously to unravel its history 
that we become aware how truly marvelous it is. 

41 




CHAPTER III 

ET us examine its several parts a little Soine 

in detail. In i 87 1 New Jersey, the last Changes 

state in the United States to do so, abol- ^. ..^^^ 

CivilMr 
ished the rate bill, and the schools of the entire 

nation became definitely free. In 1866, when 

James A.Garfield made his report to the House 

of Representatives urging it to establish a national 

bureau of education, he referred to compulsory 

school attendance in rather hesitating terms : 

The genius of our government does not allow us 
to establish a compulsory system of education, as is 
done in some of the countries of Europe. There are 
states in this Union, however, which have adopted a 
compulsory system, and perhaps that is well. It is for 
each state to determine. A distinguished gentleman 
from Rhode Island told me lately that it is now the 
law in that state that every child within its borders 
shall attend school and that every vagrant child shall 
be taken in charge by the authorities and sent to 
school. It may be well for other states to pursue the 
skme course; but probably the general government 
can do nothing of the sort. 

43 



Fifty The complaint is general in the first reports of 

Years of ^^ school authorities which the Commissioner 

c, , .of Education reproduces that children do not 
tducation ^ 

attend school; that parents are very remiss in 

their duty of sending them. Maine reports that 
**in general terms truancy and absenteeism de- 
prive us of at least 25 per cent of attainable 
results in the educational line." Massachusetts 
was among the first to act, passing a compulsory- 
education law in 1852. Each town was author- 
ized to establish " a reform school ' ' for children 
between the ages of seven and sixteen who," not 
attending school or without any regular occu- 
pation, are growing up in ignorance," and to 
send such children there instead of fining them, 
if it is thought best. Springfield reports that 
such a school was established in the almshouse, 
but, more significantly, that an ungraded school 
has also been established where habitual truants 
"who ought to be sent to the reform school 
may be kept under instruction until they can 
be returned to the graded schools." In 1870 
the city of Boston employed ten truant officers 
who gave their entire time to investigating 

44 



cases of truancy and securing the attendance of Some 
absentees. It is a far cry from these beginnings Changes 
to the more wholesome conditions of the pres- ^. .,.„ 
ent time. In 1 9 1 6 all the states but one, Mis- 
sissippi, and certain counties of Arkansas had 
compulsory-attendance laws ; twenty-seven of 
them requiring attendance for the full school 
year and the others for a specified part of it, in 
no case less than twelve weeks. In 1 870 the aver- 
age number of years of schooling of two hun- 
dred days each received by each pupil in public 
and private schools was 3.36; in 1914 it was 
6.16. The persistent effort to secure for all the 
children their right to an education which has 
characterized the last fifty years has produced 
a great number of agencies and devices for the 
protection of children, among them child-labor 
laws, which have been passed by most of the 
states and just recently by the nation ( 1 9 1 6). In 
1899 the state of Illinois created a juvenile 
court. The law which brought that wholesome 
child-saving agency into being has since been 
adopted by forty-four states and the District of 
Columbia. It has proved itself a real contribution 

45 



Fifty to the world, for many foreign countries have 
Years of adopted it. "I observe," says George Sorel in 
^merican j^.^ ..Reflections on Violence," "that nothing 
education . , . i 

is more remarkable than the change which 

has taken place in the methods of bringing up 
children ; formerly it was believed that the 
rod was the most necessary instrument of the 
schoolmaster ; nowadays corporal punishments 
have disappeared from our public elementary 
schools." That statement is not literally true for 
the United States, but it is so nearly true that it 
may stand as perhaps the most significant proof 
which can be shown that civilization has really 
been in process of becoming in recent years. 
The modern school is a cheerful, happy place. 
In it teachers train rather than govern. Its first 
aim is to inculcate self-control. Flogging and 
a pallid quiet are no longer to be found in it. 
It is a workshop rather than a disciplinary 
cell. The suggestion which was made in the 
more optimistic years of its first decade that the 
twentieth century was to be the century of the 
child may not, let us hope, be so far wrong 
after all. 

46 



The course of study which the people of this Some 
democracy at the several periods of its history Changes' 
have regarded as sufficient to prepare their chil- 
dren for the work of life is a pretty good index 
of the real progress of the nation. The period 
of rigorous Puritanism from 1630 to 1750 
brought up its children on the hornbook, the 
religious primer, the Psalter, the New and the 
Old Testament. In the period from 1750 to 
1800 the spelling book took the place of the 
primer; in 1789 arithmetic was required by 
law in Massachusetts. Geography began to be 
"read" here and there about the year 1800. 
There was a bit of English grammar in the 
spelling books, and brief lessons were assigned 
in that subject at the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century, " In some of the early editions 
[of the third part of my Institute published in 
1785] I introduced short notices of the geog- 
raphy and history of the United States, and these 
led to more enlarged descriptions of the coun- 
try," says Noah Webster. History was taught 
only in this incidental way until the second 
quarter of the nineteenth century. 

47 



Fifty There was imperative need for expansion of 

Tears of ^^ course of study. The first address delivered 

- , before the American Institute of Instruction 

t due at ion 

was upon the " Importance of Physical Edu- 
cation," by Dr. J. C. Warren. At its fourth 
meeting (1834) the Institute discussed the ques- 
tion "Can common schools be conducted prof- 
itably without the aid of bodily punishment?" 
and adopted a resolution " that the introduction 
of vocal music into our schools is an object of 
high importance to the community, and the 
American Institute of Instruction do hereby 
most cordially recommend it to public favor." 
A resolution of 1838 declared "it is desirable 
that the teaching of vocal music should be in- 
troduced into the common schools as soon as it 
may be practicable." A resolution was intro- 
duced in 1844 "that the time now devoted to 
the study of the dead languages as a part of col- 
legiate education may be better employed upon 
other subjects," but was laid on the table. 

In 1 87 1 the Institute listened to an address 
on " Kindergartening the Gospel for Children," 
by Miss E. P. Peabody, but it was not until 1882 

48 



that it recommended " the teaching of draw- Some 
ing, not as an accompHshment but as a language Changes 
for the graphic presentation of the facts and ^!^-^^-irrt 
forms of objects." 

The spirit of Pestalozzi brooded over the 
practice of education in the United States about 
the middle of the last century. Education, 
he said, is not memorizing the contents of 
books, it is learning to use one's own mind in 
doing something. It is growth from within 
outward, not from without inward. The dull 
bookwork of reading, writing, and ciphering 
was touched with life. The inclusion of object 
lessons introduced oral instruction, with all its 
beneficent, lively, free conversation about real 
things in place of the mumbling about abstrac- 
tions which had previously comprised so large 
a part of school work. 

The Schoolmaster of Yverdon transformed 
the schools of America as well as of Europe. 
" The importation of the Pestalozzian methods 
of the Home and Colonial School Society into 
the United States is the most striking develop- 
ment in American elementary education during 

49 



Fifty the middle of the nineteenth century," says Pro- 

Tears of fessor Parker. The first improvement was the 

mertcan in|-j.Q(juction of object lessons as an experiment 
education 

at the Oswego Normal School. Object teaching 

soon became the leading subject for discussion 
in teachers' institutes and spread widely in the 
schools. In 1 870 object lessons began to develop 
into instruction in natural science as a system- 
atic study for children in the elementary schools. 
That in turn gave place to nature study in the 
latter part of the nineteenth century, the dis- 
tinction between them being that nature study 
is the observational study of living objects and 
processes for the sake of becoming familiar with 
them, while the natural science which it dis- 
placed was a highly technical endeavor to master 
the general principles of science, which usually 
resulted in only a verbal knowledge of them. 
Geography was one of the sciences of the 
Greeks. Its modern form is due to Humboldt 
and Carl Ritter. Ritter, the scientist, about 1807 
came under the influence of Pestalozzi, the 
teacher, and undertook to prepare " a treatise 
in his method on Geography." From that time 

50 



"the first step in a knowledge of geography is Some 
to know thoroughly the district where we live. ' ' Changes 
This ideal teaching of geography as a study of 
man's relation to the earth, based on the per- 
sonal investigation of every student who at- 
tempts to pursue it,is still fighting its way against 
mnemonic devotion to a text. Arnold Guyot, the 
pupil of Ritter, came from Switzerland to 
Massachusetts in the year 1848. For six years 
he was employed as an inspector and institute 
lecturer by the Massachusetts State Board of 
Education. In 1854 he was made professor of 
geology and physical geography at Princeton. 
Of his work he wrote: 

During more than nine years it was my privilege 
to address thousands of teachers in the normal schools 
of Massachusetts and New Jersey, and in the teachers' 
institutes, on the subject of geographical teaching and 
the reform so much needed in that important depart- 
ment of instruction. 

About the year 1866 he published a series of 
textbooks and also a manual on " Geographical 
Teaching." The task of carrying on the reform 
in geography teaching which Guyot had begun 

51 



Fifty fell to Francis W. Parker. In season and out of 

Tears of season he preached its claims for a lifetime. He 

^ , trained thousands of teachers, addressed hun- 

tducation 

dreds of institutes, and in 1889 published his 

"How to teach Geography," "a practical ex- 
position of methods and devices in teaching 
geography which apply the principles and plans 
of Ritter and Guyot" his editor calls it. But with 
these men the modern teaching of geography 
had only begun. Their work has been carried 
forward by scores of disciples and in every part 
of the land. 

In 1 8 2 1 Warren Colburn published his "First 
Lessons in Arithmetic on the Plan of Pesta- 
lozzi." The object ofthis book, as of Pestalozzi's 
teaching itself, was to banish ciphering as the 
mere carrying out of rules. Its whole purpose 
was to do away with ununderstandable abstrac- 
tions by teaching little children in their very 
first lessons that all numbers are numbers of 
things. "The idea of number is first acquired 
by observing sensible objects," he said, and to 
prevent otherwise inevitable confusion no fig- 
ures were introduced in the first fifty-five pages 

52 



of the book. Number ideas and number names Some 
and mental operations with numbers were given Changes 
the complete right of way over figures, rules, 
written work, and the ciphering of the past. 
This plan commended itself to great numbers 
of teachers, and the textbook which presented 
it was very widely used. About the year 1870 
an intensified Pestalozzianism, known as the 
Grube method of teaching arithmetic, became 
very popular in the United States. Each numeral, 
according to this method, was treated by itself, 
and the student learned to put it through all the 
fundamental operations before he was allowed 
to pass on to the next number. Such exhaustive 
thoroughness was not only impossible to chil- 
dren but undesirable on the part of anyone, and 
the rise of the Grube method was followed by 
its fall in the early part of the period. But in- 
terest in the proper teaching of arithmetic has 
grown with the years. The thinking arithmetic 
which Warren Colburn struggled for has been 
the aim not of all but of every informed teacher 
who has come after him. Next to this the most 
noteworthy change has been in a persistent effort 

53 



Fifty to modernize our rather archaic textbooks by 
Years of omitting all subjects, methods, and problems 

^ , . which are not warranted by obvious applica- 

tducatton _ _ ^ -' ^^ 

bility. A third change which has come about in 
arithmetic is the extended use of standardized 
tests to measure the work which children are 
able to do in it. We shall speak of these later. 
The teaching of geography and arithmetic 
had begun to be rationalized here and there 
before the end of the Civil War. That work 
went forward. Object lessons had been intro- 
duced, and natural science and nature study fol- 
lowed them. New methods of teaching pupils 
to read began, as we have seen, to find favor. The 
worst method of teaching reading, the alpha- 
bet method, was practically the only method 
used from the earliest days of instruction in 
that subject by the Greeks down to our period. 
Comenius and the Jansenists found a better way, 
but their discovery did not change the universal 
ABC practice. The author of Worcester's 
"Primer," 1828, declared in his preface: 

It is not, perhaps, very important that a child 
should know the letters before it begins to read. It 

54 



may learn first to read words, by seeing them, hearing Some 
them pronounced, and having their meanings illus- Changes 
trated ; and afterwards it may learn to analyze them since the 
or name the letters of which they are composed. Civil P^r 

Horace Mann vigorously advocated the word 
method. But since the order of learning accord- 
ing to Pestalozzi was from simple to complex, 
there must be long drills, he said, upon the 
letters and after that long drills in forming letters 
into syllables and in making syllables into words. 
Consequently the influence of Pestalozzi and 
his followers upon the proper teaching of read- 
ing was harmful. It was not until the year 1 870 ^^ 
that the ABC method began to be generally 
forsaken; so that the modern teaching of read- 
ing belongs almost entirely to the last fifty years. 
The Pestalozzian practice of reducing each sub- 
ject to its lowest terms or elements and practic- 
ing at great length upon them and, finally, after 
this great mass of meaningless exercising had 
been performed, bringing the elements together 
into letters or words or sentences had as bad an 
effect upon the teaching of writing as it had 
upon the teaching of reading. The lessons which 



Fifty were given were not really lessons in writing. 
Tears of ^he letters were analyzed into strokes, — the 
American ^^^^^^^^ ^.j^e outcurved, and the incurved. One 
Education ° , .„ , i i 

must have drilled upon the strokes at very great 

length before he was considered fit to attempt 
to shape letters or to write words and sentences. 
Thus it will be seen that the educational bill of 
fare was pretty meager. 

In 1869 several of the leading manufacturers 
of Massachusetts appealed to the legislature to 
direct the Board of Education to report "some 
definite plan for introducing schools for draw- 
ing or instruction in drawing free to all men, 
women, and children in all the towns of the 
commonwealth of more than 5000 inhabit- 
ants," saying "every branch of manufactures 
in which the citizens of Massachusetts are en- 
gaged requires in the details of the processes 
connected with it some knowledge of drawing 
and other arts of design on the part of the skilled 
workmen engaged." The Board of Education, 
being deeply impressed with the importance 
of the subject, intrusted its consideration to a 
special committee, which subsequently reported 

56 



that the almost total neglect of this branch of Some 

learning in past times had been a great defect; Changes 

that we were behind many other nations in all ^. .,„^ 

■^ _ CivtllVar 

the means of art culture, a defect felt by native 

artisans and mechanics, since "foreign work- 
men occupy the best and most responsible places 
in our factories and workshops"; that agents 
should be employed to go through the com- 
monwealth and interest the people in this most 
important subject; and that "teachers should be 
required to be qualified to instruct in free-hand 
drawing, and the work should be begun in the 
primary departments and should be continued 
with zeal and fidelity through the period of 
school life." As a result, a law was passed in 
1870 including drawing among the branches 
of learning required to be taught in the public 
schools and authorizing cities and towns of more 
than 10,000 inhabitants to provide for free in- 
struction in industrial or mechanical drawing to 
persons over fifteen years of age, either in day or 
evening schools. A supervisor of drawing was 
imported from England in 1870, and in 1875 
the Boston Normal Art School was established. 

S7 



Fifty Manual training was introduced to the United 

Tears of States by an exhibit made by a Russian institu- 

^ , . tion at the Centennial Exposition in Philadel- 

tducation _ _ ^ 

phia in 1 876. Schoolmen fought it bitterly for 
a time, but whereas in 1 890 only 37 cities had 
made a place for it in their schools, by 1898 
there were 146 cities in which it was taught. 

The movement for school instruction in 
drawing, which had its beginning in Boston in 
1 870, was greatly stimulated by the Centennial 
Exposition of 1 876. Nation-wide instruction in 
the fine and industrial arts, with all that mar- 
velous development of taste and appreciation 
shown in more recent American manufactures 
and homes, is the result of that beginning. 

In 1 870 there were less than a dozen kinder- 
gartens in the United States, and all save one of 
them were conducted in the German language; 
the one English-speaking kindergarten had 
been opened in Boston in i860 by Miss Eliza- 
beth Peabody. Since that time the kindergarten 
has made its way into every corner of this land. 
In 1 9 14 there were but 6 states whose laws 
did not provide for kindergartens, and in 1 9 1 5 

58 



there were 9486 private and public kinder- Some 
gartens, with 10,877 teachers and 486,800 Changes 
students in them. It is likely that by this time 
not less than 4,000,000 children have profited 
by its training, and perhaps as many as 30,000 
young women have been instructed in the fine 
art of providing opportunities for beginning 
their education to young children, for whom 
the beginning is still the most important part of 
their entire course, even as it was to the discern- 
ing mind of Plato. The introduction of the kin- 
dergarten into American education has been 
called " the greatest step in the educational his- 
tory of the country, with the exception of the 
founding of normal schools." And perhaps the 
most significant change which the kindergarten 
has wrought, it has brought about indirectly, 
through its wholesome modification of the 
work which children do in the primary grades 
and of the spirit in which they do it, rather than 
directly through its own instruction. 

For a comparative study of the changes 
which have taken place in common schools, 
that is, the public elementary and high schools 

59 



Fifty maintained by state and local taxation, we can- 
Tears of ^^^ Jq better than examine the following table 

c, , . from the report of the Commissioner of Educa- 
tducation ^ 

tion for the year 1 9 1 6. 

COMMON-SCHOOL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED 





1870 


1875 


1880 


1885 


Total population 

Persons five to eighteen years 
of age 

Pupils enrolled (duplicates ex- 
cluded) 

Per cent of total population 
enrolled 

Per cent of persons five to 
eighteen years of age enrolled 

Average daily attendance . . 

Relation of same to enrollment 
(per cent) 

Average length of school term 
(days) 

Total number of days attended 
by all pupils 

Average number of days at- 
tended by each person five 
to eighteen 

Average number of days at- 
tended by each pupil enrolled 


'38,558,371 

2 12,055,443 

6,871,522 

17.82 

57.00 
4,077,347 

59-3 

* 132.2 

539,053,423 

44-7 
78.4 


^ 43,700,554 

3 13,405,200 

8,785,678 

20.10 

65.54 
5,248,114 

59-7 
130.4 

684,189,477 

51.0 

77-9 


' 50,155,783 

2 15,065,767 

9,867,505 

19.67 

65.50 
6,144,143 

62.3 

130-3 

800,719,970 

53-1 
81. 1 


s 56,221,868 

3 16,773,190 

11,398,024 

20.27 

67.96 

7,297,529 

64.0 

130.7 

953,451,056 

56.8 
83.6 


Male teachers 

Female teachers 


77,529 
122,986 


108,791 
149,074 


122,795 
163,798 


121,762 
204,154 


Whole number of teachers . . 

Per cent of male teachers . . 

Average monthly wages of male 
teachers* 

Average monthly wages of fe- 
male teachers 

Average for all teachers* . . 

Number of schoolhouses s . . 

Value of all school property . 


200,515 
38.7 

$28.54 

116,312 

$130,383,008 


257,865 
42.2 

$32-55 

157,364 

$192,013,666 


286,593 
42.8 

$29.96 

178,122 

$209,571,718 


325,916 
37-4 

$34-22 

205,315 
$263,668,536 



The figures for this year are subject to correction. 
' United States census. * Estimated. 



60 



The number of persons from live to eight- Some 

een years of age in the United States in 1 9 1 4 Changes 

1-^1 ^1 ^ • • o ^ince the 

was a httle more than twice as many as in 1 8 70, ^. .,„^ 

•' ' CtvilMnr 

but the number of pupils enrolled in school 

STATES IN VARIOUS YEARS — GENERAL STATISTICS 



1890 


1895 


1900 


1905 


1910 


19141 


2 62,622,250 


3 68,844,341 


275,602,515 


3 82,584,061 


291,972,266 


98,781,324 


2 18,543,201 


3 19,911,050 


2 21,404,322 


3 23,410,800 


2 24,239,948 


26,002,153 


12,722,581 


14,243,765 


15,503,110 


16,468,300 


17,813,852 


19,153,786 


20.32 


20.69 


20.51 


19.94 


19.56 


'9.39 


68.61 


71-54 


72-43 


70-35 


73-49 


73.66 


8,153,635 


9,548,722 


10,632,772 


11,481,531 


12,827,307 


14,216,459 


64.1 


67.0 


68.6 


69.7 


72.1 


74.2 


134-7 


139-5 


144-3 


150.9 


'57-5 


.58-7 


1,098,232,725 


1,331,775,201 


1,534,822,633 


1,732,845,238 


2,011,477,065 


2,255,657,142 


59-2 


66.9 


71.8 


74.0 


83.0 


86.7 


86.3 


93-5 


99.0 


105.2 


1 13.0 


1 17.8 


125,525 


129,706 


126,588 


110,532 


110,481 


114,662 


238,397 


268,336 


296,474 


349.737 


412,729 


465,396 


363,922 


398,042 


423,062 


• 460,269 


523,210 


580,058 


34-5 


32.6 


29.9 


24.0 


21. 1 


.9.8 




I46.82 


$46.53 


$55.04 


$68.86 


$79-94 




I39.41 


$38.93 


$42.69 


$53.40 


$62.57 


^37-47 


$41-02 


$45." 


$51.10 


$61.70 


$66.07 


224,526 


239,630 


248,279 


256,826 


265,474 


276,460 


^342,531, 791 


$440,666,022 


$550,069,217 


$733,446,805 


$1,091,007,512 


$1,444,666,859 





* Several states are not included in this average. 

* Including buildings rented. 



61 



Fifty 
Tears of 
'American 
Education 



COMMON-SCHOOL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED 



Receipts : 

From income of perma- 
nent funds and rents . 
From state taxes . . . 
From local taxes . . . 
From all other sources 

Total received . . . 

Percent of total derived from — 
I ncome of permanent funds 

and rents 

State taxes 

Local taxes 

All other sources . . . 

Expenditures : 

For sites, buildings, furni- 
ture, libraries, and appa- 
ratus 

For salaries of superin- 
tendents and teachers . 

For all other purposes . . 

Total expended . . . 

Expenditure per capita of pop- 
ulation 



Expenditure per pupil in aver- 
age attendance : 

For sites, buildings, etc. . 

For salaries 

For all other purposes . . 

Total expenditure per 
pupil 

Per cent of expenditure de- 
voted to — 
Sites, buildings, etc. . . 

Salaries 

All other purposes . . . 
Average expenditure per day 
for each pupil (cents) — 

For salaries 

For all purposes .... 



»37.832.566 



$63,396,666 
?i.64 



$54,722,250 



$83,504,007 
$..9i 



$15.91 



^55.942.972 



$78,094,687 
$1.56 



$72,878,993 



5110,328,375 
$1.96 



$9-99 



$i5.r2 



62 



STATES IN VARIOUS YEARS — FINANCIAL STATISTICS Some 

Changes 
since the 
CivilM^r 



1S90 


1895 


1900 


1905 


1910 


19141 


?7. 744. 765 


$7,800,740 


$9,152,274 


$13,194,042 


$14,096,555 


$.6,916,690 


26,345.323 


34,638,098 


37,886,740 


44,349,295 


64,604,701 


87,895,320 


97,222,426 


118,915,304 


149,486,845 


210,167,770 


312,221,582 


425,457,487 


11,882,292 


15,210,769 


23,240,130 


34,107,962 


42,140,859 


31,473,977 


:f 143, 194,806 


$176,564,911 


$219,765,989 


$301,819,069 


$433,063,697 


$561,743,474 


5-4 


4-4 


4.2 


4.4 


3-2 


3.01 


.8.4 


19.6 


17.2 


14.7 


14.9 


15.65 


67.9 


673 


6S.0 


69.6 


72.1 


75-74 


8-3 


8.7 


10.6 


"3 


9.8 


5.60 


$26,207,041 


$29,436,940 


$35,450,820 


$56,416,168 


$69,978,370 


$9., 606,460 


91.836,484 


113,872,388 


137,687,746 


177,462,981 


253,9'5,i7o 


323,610,91s 


22,463,190 


32,499,951 


41,826,052 


57,737. 5>i 


102,356,894 


139,859,771 


$140,506,715 


$175,809,279 


$214,964,618 


$291,616,660 


$426,250,434 


5555,077,146 


$2.24 


$2.55 


$2.84 


?3.53 


$4.64 


$5.62 


$3.2. 


$3.08 


53.33 


$4-91 


$5.46 


$6.44 


11.26 


"•93 


12.95 


.5.46 


19.79 


22.76 


2.76 


3-40 


3-93 


5-03 


7.98 


9.84 


$17.23 


$18.41 


$20.21 


$25.40 


$33-23 


$39-04 


18.6 


.6.7 


' 16.5 


•9-3 


16.41 


16.50 


65.4 


64.8 


64.0 


60.9 


59.60 


58.30 


16.0 


18.5 


19-5 


.9.8 


23-99 


25.20 


8.4 


8.6 


9.0 


10.2 


12.6 


M-34 


12.8 


•3-2 


14.0 


.6.8 


2.. I 


24.60 



1 The figures for this year are subject to correction. 



63 



Fifty was nearly three times as many m 19 14 as in 
Tears of 1870, while the average daily attendance in 
^, 1 9 1 4 was more than three times that of 1 870. 

The average number of days attended by each 
person in 1870 was 44.7, in 19 14 it was 86.7. 
The average monthly wages of teachers has in- 
creased from $28.54 to $66.07, while the num- 
ber of schoolhouses has more than doubled, 
and the value of school property was more than 
eleven times as great in 1 9 1 4 as in 18 70. More- 
over, the funds available for the maintenance 
of public schools were nearly four times as great 
in 1 9 14 as they were but twenty-three years 
before, in 1892. Surely this is a record of which 
a country may well be proud. 

But the table does not by any means tell the 
complete story of the changes which have taken 
place. The first graded schools came into being 
about i860. Before that time primary schools 
were not^ generally regarded as a part of the 
school system, but were thought of as things 
apart and were very indifferently treated. They 
had to make their way into the system very 
much in the same way that the kindergartens 

64 



have since made theirs. The high schools also Some 
were at first supplementary schools. They too Changes 
had to be integrated into the system. Supervi- !^-'^^-jrJ 
sion of instruction is almost wholly a thing of 
the last fifty years. The first city superintendent 
took office in Buffalo in 1837. Providence fol- 
lowed in 1839 ; New Orleans in 1 841; Cleve- 
land in 1844; Baltimore in 1849; Cincinnati 
in 1850; Boston in 1851; New York, San 
Francisco, and Jersey City in 1852; Newark 
and Brooklyn in 1853; Chicago and St. Louis 
in 1 854; Philadelphia not until 1883. A school 
system without a superintendent is practically 
unthought of at the present time. At the begin- 
ning of this half century it was the rule and 
its opposite the rare exception. It was in 1867 
that WilliamTorrey Harris became superintend- 
ent of schools of St. Louis, beginning thirteen 
years of almost unequaled service as educator 
of the American people. The course of study 
which he made, the conceptions of education 
which he championed, — as, for example, "Our 
American idea rests on this principle: not what 
the teacher does for the pupil, but what he gets 

65 



Fifty the pupil to do for himself is of value," " Every 
Years of g^-gp toward the mastery of the printed page is 

cs , .a step toward freedom from and independence 
taucatton / ... 

of living teachers. Thus our education is a giv- 
ing of the conventionalities of a perpetual self- 
education," — and the 'Journal of speculative 
Philosophy which he edited (the first periodi- 
cal devoted to philosophy anywhere published 
in the English tongue) demonstrate for all 
time what the office of city superintendent of 
schools at its best may be. 

"The history of education since the time of 
Horace Mann," says Dr. Harris, "is very largely 
an account of the successive modifications in- 
troduced into elementary schools through the 
direct or indirect influence of the normal school." 
The 42 normal schools with which our period 
started had increased to 273 in 19 14, 232 of 
them being public and 4 1 private schools. Be- 
sides, there were 1 189 public and 292 private 
high schools offering training courses for teach- 
ers. In all a total of 131,998 students were being 
made acquainted with the functions of the 
teacher and habituated under direction to the 
66 



work of teaching. The first normal schools re- Some 
ceived their pupils from the elementary schools. Changes' 
Framingham's requirements in 1 867 were that .. 
the candidate must be at least sixteen years of 
age, must declare his intention to teach in the 
schools of Massachusetts, and " must present a 
certificate of good physical, intellectual, and 
moral character, and pass a satisfactory exami- 
nation in reading, spelling, writing, defining, 
grammar, geography, and arithmetic." "The 
course of study," says this same circular of 1 867, 
"includes reading, with analysis of sounds and 
vocal gymnastics; writing; spelling, with deri- 
vations and definitions; punctuation; grammar, 
with analysis of the English language; arith- 
metic; algebra; geometry; physical and political 
geography, with map drawing; physiology; bot- 
any; zoology; natural philosophy; astronomy; 
mental and moral philosophy; school laws; 
theory and art of teaching; civil polity of Massa- 
chusetts and the United States; English liter- 
ature; vocal music; drawing. The Latin and 
French languages may be pursued as optional 
studies, but not to the neglect of the English 

67 



Fifty course." And all this was to be done in a two- 
Tears of year course ! Dr. Harris declared at the semi- 
^Amertcan centennial celebration of the founding; of the 
Education i i i • onr. i 

Framingham Normal School, in 1 8 8 8, that "all 

normal-school work in the country follows sub- 
stantially one tradition . . . and this traces back 
to the course laid down at Lexington in 1 839." 
There have been great departures from that 
tradition since 1867. Normal schools now re- 
quire their students to be graduates of high 
schools and find a two-year course all too short 
for proper instruction in the art of teaching. If 
we compare the training which they give now 
with the training of fifty years ago, their earlier 
efforts will be seen to be but a promise and be- 
ginning of the larger and more helpful work 
which they are doing to-day. 

The first teachers' institute was assembled by 
Dr. Henry Barnard in Hartford, Connecticut, 
in 1839.^ He regarded it as only a temporary 
device for giving teachers an " opportunity to 
revise and extend their knowledge of the studies 

^ Jacob S. Denman organized his first teachers' institute at Ithaca, 
on April 4, 1843. 

68 



usually pursued in district schools and of the best Some 

methods of school arrangements, instruction. Changes 
. , , . . J , since the 

and government under the recitations and lee- .. 

tures of experienced and well-known teachers 
and educators." This "temporary device" has 
lasted for seventy-seven years and has become a 
permanent feature of the school life of every 
state. The purpose of the institute has not 
changed. The words of its founder still state its 
program. In every corner of the land it provides 
a means of educational rededication and pro- 
fessional renewing and bids fair to last in some 
form or other as long as children and schools 
and teachers exist. 

The spread of these two agencies for the 
training of teachers has during the last fifty 
years been the distinctive thing about them. 
While their work has been intensified, their 
benefits have been made nearly universal. But 
three new agencies for professional improve- 
ment have been created within that period. 
One of them is the summer school, another the 
Teachers' Reading Circle, and the third is uni- 
versity-extension courses. Chautauquas, after 

69 



Fifty the type of their original in New York State, 

Years of have been held in many places. Summer schools 

r, J . have become almost a regular feature of nor- 
taucatton _ ^ ° 

mal-school, university, and college work. And 
university-extension teaching, after a period 
of lethargy, now seems to be firmly established 
both as a duty and a privilege of most of the great 
teaching centers. Certain states have thought 
it so indispensable that they have made it an 
integral part of their educational work. The 
Teachers' Reading Circle was the invention of 
an Ohio teacher in the year 1882. It is now a 
nearly nation-wide institution. 

If we turn from elementary education, and 
the special agencies more particularly charged 
with conserving it, to secondary and higher 
education, we shall find the same phenomenal 
changes at work there also. The high school 
had but a fitful and uncertain status fifty years 
ago. In no department of education has such 
amazing development taken place in the last 
half century as in this. In 1826 Massachusetts 
directed every town of 500 households to em- 
ploy a master to teach United States history, 
70 



bookkeeping, geometry, surveying, and alge- Some 

bra; and every town of 4000 inhabitants to Changes 

employ a master to teach Greek and Latin, his- [^ ''^ ,„i 
^ "^ . ... Civilfmr 

tory, rhetoric, and logic. It was the intention of 

this law to universalize the high school within 
the state. A law passed in 1 848 brought it into 
being here and there in Ohio. Legal permission 
was given to organize higher grades in the pub- 
lic schools of Iowa in 1 849, and county high 
schools were authorized there in i 8 5 8 . Boards of 
education of union free school districts were au- 
thorized to establish academical departments in 
1 8 6 4 in New York State. Maryland legislated to 
abolish academies and substitute high schools 
for them in 1865. The high school seemed so 
desirable and necessary that some communities 
established it without waiting for authoriza- 
tion of law. Efforts were made to prevent this. 
In 1872 Judge Cooley's decision in the Kal- 
amazoo case established the principle that " edu- 
cation not merely in the rudiments, but in an 
enlarged sense was regarded as an important 
practical advantage to be supplied at their 
option to rich and poor alike." This greatly 

71 



Fifty encouraged the formation of high schools in 
Tears of other states, as well as legalized them in Michi- 
merican ^^ Wisconsin established a system of free high 
Education , . „ • • 

schools in 1875 and Minnesota in 1881. Each 

succeeding year has seen their number grow, 
until in 1 9 1 4 there was a total number of 1 1 , 5 1 5 
public high schools, with 57,909 instructors 
and 1,218,804 students. There were moreover 
2199 private secondary schools, with 13,890 
teachers and 154,857 students. No statistics 
seem to be available to make possible a com- 
parison of the number of schools in existence 
at the beginning of the half century with the 
number in existence at its close. Their tre- 
mendous growth can, however, be indicated 
by a comparison of the above figures with the 
number of schools in existence in 1890, when 
a total of 25 26 public high schools, with 9120 
teachers and 202,963 students, were reported. 
There were at that time 1632 private schools, 
with 7209 teachers and 94,93 i students. That 
is, there were more than three and one-third 
times as many high schools, more than four and 
one-third times as many teachers, and more 
72 



than four and one-third times as many students Some 

in 1914 as there had been twenty-four years Changes 

before. The explanation of this remarkable '",^'^^,„^ 
^ Ctvilmr 

change is to be found in the more thorough 

character of high-school instruction, in the 
greater variety of courses which are offered, 
and, above all, in a growing conviction on the 
part of the American people that an elementary 
education, no matter how good it may be, is 
not sufficient preparation for the battle of life 
on the part of the young. The time seems to be 
rapidly approaching when public opinion will 
demand some sort of high-school training for 
all. At the beginning of our period the high 
school was hardly a common school. Its chief, 
and nearly its only function, was to teach Latin, 
Greek, and mathematics to the small part of the 
population which planned to go on to college. 
That traditional task has colored all its work, 
but is now the smallest part of it. It was solic- 
itude "to give a child an education that shall 
fit him for active life and shall serve as a foun- 
dation for eminence in his profession, whether 
mercantile or mechanical," that led to the 

73 



Fifty founding of the first high school, in 1821. 

Tears of Though the high school was an outgrowth of 

^American ^^^ elementary school, the college practice of 
Education .... 

admitting students upon examination made it 

an adjunct to the college. At the beginning 
of the Civil War these examinations were in 
Latin, Greek, arithmetic, geography, English 
grammar, algebra, geometry, and ancient his- 
tory. New subjects made their appearance in 
the college-entrance examinations in this order: 

Modern history (United States), Michigan 1869 

Physical geography, Michigan and Harvard 1870 

EngHsh composition, Princeton . . . . 1870 

Physical science, Harvard 1872 

English literature. Harvard 1874 

Modern language (foreign), Harvard . . 1875 

Alternative courses and a large freedom of elec- 
tion began to be offered in colleges about the 
. year 1 869, and, as a consequence, courses other 
than the classical course began to be given in 
high schools. Their diversity has increased with 
the years, and now commercial courses, tech- 
nical courses, manual-training and domestic- 
science courses, art courses, agricultural courses, 

74 



English scientific courses, etc., and frequently Some 
separate schools devoted to one or another of Changes 

■i r c • ^- u • s^nce the 

these lorms oi instruction, are much more in ^. .,„^ 

Civil frar 
evidence than is the classical course of instruc- 
tion from which they all sprang. The old method 
of passing from the high school to the college 
through the entrance way of examinations is 
still pretty completely in force in the eastern 
part of the United States. In the West an ac- 
crediting system, the outgrowth of that intro- 
duced by the University of Michigan in 1871, 
obtains. Innumerable conferences have been 
held for the purpose of improving the articula- 
tion between the high school and the college. 
That subject is temporarily in abeyance, for in 
more recent years the question of the relation- 
ship of the elementary school to the high school 
has supplanted it. The junior high school, or 
intermediate school, has been created to bridge 
the gap that formerly lay between them. That 
institution is as yet rather too new for statistical 
consideration. It took form in Berkeley, Cali- 
fornia, in the year 1908, and has been adopted 
in some form or other in many cities and towns 

7S 



Fifty of the United States. Fundamentally, it involves 
Years of ^ reorganization of courses in the seventh and 
P , eighth grades of the elementary school, to pro- 

vide for differentiation of work for pupils in 
accordance with their tastes, aptitudes, and 
probable future careers. This rearrangement of 
courses facilitates departmental teaching. In 
some places this reorganized upper-elementary 
school is combined with the first year of the 
high school, and a separate intermediate school 
is formed. This is the six, three, and three plan. 
Other redistributions are found. While the six, 
three, and three plan bids fair to be generally 
accepted, the period of preliminary experimen- 
tation is not yet over. 

Another change to be noted is the lengthen- 
ing of the high-school course by the addition 
of two years of college work. This is called 
the junior college. It too is still an experiment 
which as yet but few communities have been 
moved to try. 

Vocational education, which is the oldest 
form of education of all, has asserted its claims 
with unusual vigor since the beginning of the 

76 



twentieth century. After much agitation three Some 
types of schools have been evolved to prepare Changes 
boys and girls over fourteen years of age for em- ^p-^^-jjJ 
ployment in agriculture and in the trades and 
industries: all-day schools, which aim to give 
opportunities for practicing a vocation on a 
productive basis; part-time schools, intended to 
give young workers an opportunity to extend 
their knowledge of their vocation or fit them- 
selves for a new one; evening schools, to provide 
opportunity for mature workers to extend their 
knowledge of the vocations in which they are 
engaged during the day. Though this whole 
endeavor falls within this century, six or more 
states already have in operation definite plans for 
organizing and supervising vocational schools 
and assist local communities in financing them. 
These states are Massachusetts, New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana. 
At least four other states have made the begin- 
nings of similar organization. Efforts to pro- 
mote this type of education have already been 
so effective that the Smith-Hughes Bill has 
become a law, subsidizing vocational education 

77 



Fifty in the several states by maximal grants of 
Tears of ^7^000,000 per annum from the national treas- 
merican ^ ^^^ money to be given to the states for the 
education / . \ ° j r 1 

salaries or vocational teachers and tor the train- 
ing of such teachers only upon condition that 
they expend an equal amount for the same pur- 
pose. With the development of vocational edu- 
cation the problem of vocational guidance has 
demanded attention and the beginnings of a 
helpful service to young people have been made. 
Of the 563 colleges, universities, and techno- 
logical schools in the United States in 1 9 1 5, not 
less than 304 were established since the begin- 
ning of the year 1 867. "The Illinois Industrial 
University," located at Champaign, Illinois, was 
founded in 1867, "to teach such branches of 
learning as are related to agriculture and the 
mechanic arts, not excluding other scientific 
and classical studies and military tactics." The 
preparatory department of the University of 
Minnesota was opened in 1867, and by 1 869 a 
class had been fitted for the first college year. 
Cornell University was opened to students in 
1868. The American college goes back to 1 6 3 6 

78 



for its beginning, but the American university Some 

is almost entirely a creation of the last fifty years. Changes 

The Yale catalop-ueof 1860-1861 contains the ^. .,„^ 

^ Civil War 

first announcement that the Ph.D. degree will 

be granted. Harvard did not announce it until 
1 872. It was not until 1 890 that Harvard organ- 
ized a separate graduate school. The University 
of Michigan offered the doctor's degree in phil- 
osophy in 1 874. Johns Hopkins University was 
opened for instruction in i 876. It was primarily 
a graduate school from the first and has shaped 
university instruction throughout the entire 
country as perhaps no other influence has. The 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology was 
opened in 1865. Of the significant history and 
the vast influence of these and a score of other 
great teaching organizations the limits within 
which we work forbid us to speak; upon the 
teaching of medicine, law, and theology we may 
not enter, though changes as significant as any 
which we have mentioned have taken place in 
these great fields. For the education of atypical 
and defective children, as for each of these great 
subjects, a whole volume would be required. 

79 



Fifty Of the growth of scientific agriculture we 

Years of niust speak a little more at length. It began with 
the passage of the Morrill Act on July 2, 1 862, 
in the midst of the Civil War. It increased so 
mightily that in 19 14 there were 69 agricul- 
tural colleges, with 69,132 students and 6379 
instructors. These places of agricultural learn- 
ing have for some years been teaching from 
60,000 to 80,000 students per year. Approxi- 
mately 5 3 per cent of their graduates return to 
the farm, and 95 per cent devote themselves to 
agriculture in some form or other. Of those not 
graduating, practically all return to the land. In 
addition, very liberal provisions have been made 
by some of the states for the teaching of agri- 
culture in the public schools. Massachusetts has 
developed a remarkable system of project work. 
New York State has recently adopted the town- 
ship system of school control and has passed a 
law authorizing each town to employ a town 
director of agriculture, the state pledging itself 
to provide $600 as its contribution to his salary. 
The higher education of women has been 
peculiarly a development of the last fifty years. 
80 



The Civil War left the work of teaching the Some 

young largely in the hands of women. They Changes 

were so faithful in that which was committed ^. .,„^ 

Civil Mnr 
to them that they were made rulers over more 

and more cities. If they were to teach, they 

must have opportunities for learning. When 

Michigan University opened its doors to them, 

in 1870, they were for the first time in the 

United States accorded equal opportunities with 

men in a thoroughly established college. All the 

state universities made provision for them. Of 

colleges for women, Vassar was opened in 1865, 

Wellesley in 1 875, Smith in 1 875, Bryn Mawr 

in 1885, Radcliffe in 1879, Barnard in 1889. 

All the universities save three or four are open 

to them. In 1870 but 30.7 per cent of the 

colleges were coeducational, and 69.3 per cent 

were for men only. In 191 5, however, 70.7 

per cent of the colleges open to men were 

coeducational, and 29.3 per cent for men only. 

The education of the children of the negro 

race was one of the most serious problems that 

the nation confronted at the end of the war. 

The Freedmen's Bureau, created by Congress 



Fifty received no aid unless they were graded and 
Tears of j^^d at least loo pupils, with one teacher for 

lAmerican -i j ^.^. a c 

^ , . every 50 pupils, and an average attendance 01 

not less than 85 per cent. During the first four 

years of its existence this fund was used to assist 

the establishing of school systems in the cities 

of the South; for the next four years it was used 

to encourage the establishment of state school 

systems. In 1875 its secretary reported that all 

the states had established school systems and 

were maintaining them. The trustees of the fund 

thereupon devoted it to the proper training of 

teachers. They established a normal school at 

Nashville, and in order that it might leaven the 

entire South they created a large number of 

scholarships, of $200 each, to enable deserving 

students from all the Southern states to attend 

its classes. By 1903 this parent normal school 

was no longer needed, for it had secured the 

creation of state normal schools to foster the 

schools of each state. The trustees thereupon 

transformed the Peabody Normal School into 

the well-endowed Peabody College for the 

Training of Teachers. 

84 



In 1882 John F. Slater created a trust of Some 

$ 1 ,000,000 for the promotion of normal and in- Changes 

dustrial education amonp; the children of freed- ^. .,J^ 

° _ _ ^ Civilmir 

men. The income from this fund is used chiefly 

to pay the salaries of teachers of industrial pur- 
suits in schools for colored students. A board of 
trustees was organized in 1908 to administer a 
fundof$i,ooo,ooo given by Miss AnnaT.Jeanes 
for fostering rural schools for negroes. This fund 
is used in several ways : in some districts county 
superintendents are assigned a superior teacher 
of industrial work, whose duty it is to introduce 
such work into the rural schools of the county 
and to supervise it; in other districts a teacher 
is assigned to a central school and does exten- 
sion work in the schools of the region about it; 
a third method consists in cooperating with 
local communities in lengthening the school 
term. Another fund of $ i ,000,000, the Phelps- 
Stokes fund, assists by making researches, endow- 
ing scholarships, etc. The General Education 
Board, incorporated in 1903 for "the promo- 
tion of education within the United States of 
America without distinction of race, sex, or 

8s 



Fifty received no aid unless they were graded and 
Tears of y^^i^ ^X least loo pupils, with one teacher for 

<iAmerican •^ ^ .. j c 

^ , every 50 pupils, and an average attendance 01 

not less than 85 per cent. During the first four 

years of its existence this fund was used to assist 

the establishing of school systems in the cities 

of the South; for the next four years it was used 

to encourage the establishment of state school 

systems. In 1875 its secretary reported that all 

the states had established school systems and 

were maintaining them. Thetrustees of the fund 

thereupon devoted it to the proper training of 

teachers. They established a normal school at 

Nashville, and in order that it might leaven the 

entire South they created a large number of 

scholarships, of $200 each, to enable deserving 

students from all the Southern states to attend 

its classes. By 1903 this parent normal school 

was no longer needed, for it had secured the 

creation of state normal schools to foster the 

schools of each state. The trustees thereupon 

transformed the Peabody Normal School into 

the well-endowed Peabody College for the 

Training of Teachers. 

84 



In 1882 John F. Slater created a trust of Some 
$ 1 ,000,000 for the promotion of normal and in- Changes 
dustrial education among the children of freed- 
men. The income from this fund is used chiefly 
to pay the salaries of teachers of industrial pur- 
suits in schools for colored students. A board of 
trustees was organized in 1908 to administer a 
fundof$i,ooo,ooo given by Miss AnnaT.Jeanes 
for fostering rural schools for negroes. This fund 
is used in several ways : in some districts county 
superintendents are assigned a superior teacher 
of industrial work, whose duty it is to introduce 
such work into the rural schools of the county 
and to supervise it; in other districts a teacher 
is assigned to a central school and does exten- 
sion work in the schools of the region about it; 
a third method consists in cooperating with 
local communities in lengthening the school 
term. Another fund of $ i ,000,000, the Phelps- 
Stokes fund, assists by making researches, endow- 
ing scholarships, etc. The General Education 
Board, incorporated in 1903 for "the promo- 
tion of education within the United States of 
America without distinction of race, sex, or 

8s 



Fifty creed," and which controls a fund of some 
Tears of ^46, coo, coo, originally devoted its resources 
£s , . to the promotion of secondary, rural, and 
negro education in the Southern states. Since 
1905 it has taken the entire country for its 
province, and more recently it has planned to 
assist medical education in China. It is chiefly 
concerned with the promotion of agriculture 
in the South, the development of a system of 
secondary schools there, and the promotion of 
higher education throughout the nation. With 
such encouragement as these great organiza- 
tions have been able to give the education of 
the colored race, it is clear that progress alto- 
gether unprecedented in the history of the world 
has been made. The average of life has risen so 
rapidly, and colored men who were born in 
slavery have attained such usefulness and leader- 
ship in the short period since the war, as to en- 
courage a confident hopefulness for the future 
of their race. The work of Booker T. Washington 
alone has transformed the status of a people. It 
is a significant fact that the industrial training 
developed in the colored schools has blazed a 
86 



path which education is to-day taking through- Some 
out the nation. 

In addition to those already mentioned, three 
other great endowments have been made for 
the promotion of education. One of these is the 
Carnegie Institution at Washington. It took 
form in 1 907 and is a corporation "to encourage 
in the broadest and most Hberal manner investi- 
gation, research, and discovery, and the appU- 
cation of knowledge to the improvement of 
mankind." It has a fund of $22,000,000 for 
that purpose. 

In the year 1906 Mr. Carnegie created a 
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 
endowing it with $10,000,000, to which sum 
in 1908 he added $5,000,000. "I have reached 
the conclusion," said Mr. Carnegie, "that the 
least rewarded of all the professions is that of 
the teacher in our higher educational institu- 
tions. ... I have transferred to you, and to your 
successors as trustees, $ 1 0,000,000, the revenue 
from which is to provide retiring pensions 
for the teachers of universities, colleges, and 
technical schools in our country, Canada, and 

87 



Fifty Newfoundland, under such conditions as you 
Tears of j^j^y adopt from time to time." 

r.j . The Russell Saee Foundation was created in 

tducation ° 

1 907, by a gift of ^ 1 0,000,000 from Mrs. Sage, 
for the "improvement of social and living condi- 
tions in the United States of America." Its trus- 
tees decided at the beginning that its primary 
function is "to eradicate as far as possible the 
causes of poverty and ignorance rather than to 
relieve the sufferings of those who are poor 
or ignorant." Among its activities has been a 
persistent study of the ways of measuring edu- 
cational progress and results, and a series of 
important investigations of the problem of re- 
tardation and elimination in the public schools. 
Very important school surveys have been made 
by its educational staff. The total bequests to 
education from 1871 to 1914, inclusive, is re- 
ported by the United States Commissioner of 
Education as $584,418,082. 

It is fitting since we began with science that 
we should end with science. There is no magic 
about it, nothing but the patience to answer 
human problems by examining minutely facts 



which bear upon them. This same minuter ex- Some 

amining of facts which in fifty years produced Changes 

a new medicine has produced a new education. ^!^^^., „l 
^ . Civil Whr 

Three hundred years ago Richard Mulcaster 

urged the importance of a serious study of edu- 
cation. **I conclude," he said, **that this trade 
requireth a particular college for these four 
causes. First, for the subject, being the means 
to make or mar the whole fry of our state. Sec- 
ondly, for the number, whether of them that 
are to learn or of them that are to teach. Thirdly, 
for the necessity of the profession, which may 
not be spared. Fourthly, for the matter of their 
study, which is comparable to the greatest pos- 
sessions, for language, for judgment, for skill 
how to train, for variety in all points of learn- 
ing, wherein the framing of the mind and the 
exercising of the body craveth exquisite con- 
sideration, besides the staidness of the person." 
College authorities were deaf to this proposal 
and blind to this need until President Wayland 
sought to establish a course of instruction in the 
science ofteaching at Brown University in 1850. 
His efforts were not successful. Horace Mann 



Fifty introduced such a course as an elective study at 

Years of Antioch College in 1853. The University of 

-, , Iowa had a normal department from i8c6 to 

taucation _ , . 

1873, which became a chair of didactics after 

that date. In 1874 President Angell recom- 
mended that lectures be given to the senior class 
of the University of Michigan on the organiz- 
ing and management of schools and the art of 
teaching. In 1879 the Regents, on the recom- 
mendation of the president and faculty of that 
university, established a chair of science and 
art of teaching, with the fivefold purpose, as 
they declared, of fitting university students for 
the higher positions in the public-school serv- 
ice, of promoting the science of education, of 
teaching the history and theory of education, 
of securing to teaching the rights and preroga- 
tives of a profession, and of giving a more per- 
fect unity to the state educational system. 

Since that time many universities and col- 
leges have created similar chairs, which have 
not been slow in becoming energetic depart- 
ments. For a long time their occupants were 
regarded with a good deal of suspicion by their 
90 



more conservative colleagues in the academic Some 

family. They were not slow, however, in prov- Changes 

, . r A J •. 1. ^ince the 

mg their useiulness, and it soon became appar- 

ent that the interest which they represented 

was too serious and far-reaching to be conserved 

by such inadequate means. 

Clark University, which opened in 1889, 
made ampler provision for it; and in 1898 
Teachers College became a professional school 
of Columbia University, taking rank with the 
schools of law, medicine, and applied science. 
The University of Chicago has also established 
a college of education, and schools of education 
are now to be found in nearly all of the larger 
universities. 

This institutional study of education is a 
twentieth-century activity. Its first fruits are 
a clearer comprehension of educational prin- 
ciples and a more thorough organization of 
educational machinery. Energetic research has 
already been as profitable in this field as in other 
fields of science. 

One of our most capable historians of edu- 
cation values what has been achieved in this 

91 



Fifty direction so highly that he does not hesitate to 
Tears of g^y that John Dewey's discovery that real edu- 

r. J cation is and must be based upon the nature of 

tducation ^ _ ^ 

the child and E. L. Thorndike's discovery of a 
method of scientifically measuring educational 
results will in time be ranked in importance with 
Darwin's conception of evolution. Rousseau's 
adjuration "Study your pupil, for it is evident 
that you know nothing about him" has beeci a 
controlling principle in the last four decades. 
A science of child psychology came into being, 
and psychological conceptions and methods 
took the place of empirical notions and rule-of- 
thumb devices of an earlier time. Herbart's 
reconstructions of educational doctrine contrib- 
uted to this movement. Physiology and psy- 
chology taught the schoolmaster that the human 
organism is an action system. Passivity in learn- 
ing was abandoned, and methods of training 
through activity were substituted for it. The 
newly discovered science of medicine and the 
new education joined forces to conserve the 
physical well-being of the growing child. Acti- 
vistic psychology revealed the importance of 
92 



Nature's method of training him by play. Scien- Some 

tific study of administration and of methods of Changes 

instruction led to a reorganization of schools, ^. .,„, 

° ^ , CivillVar 

and school surveying came into being as a 

method of determining whether or not condi- 
tions called for improvement and of deciding 
what that improvement should be. The effort to 
evaluate instruction necessitated the formula- 
tion of standards and measuring scales with 
which to detect the presence or absence of the 
results required. That particular endeavor is still 
in its earlier stages, but bureaus for measuring 
and testing the sufficiency of the processes and 
the products of instruction have been created in 
several places. The study of sociology has con- 
tributed substantially to the remaking of educa- 
tional theory. The pragmatic philosophy, with 
its revolutionary conception of the nature and 
function of knowledge, has just begun to revise 
educational aims and remake programs of study . 
Newer and truer educational rallying cries begin 
to sound above the call to get knowledge for 
the sake of knowledge and science for the sake 
of science. Purposive education begins to banish 

93 



Fifty aimless learning from the field. The doctrine 

Tears of of formal or general discipline, which directed 

mertcan ^^^ pursuit of certain studies for the develop- 
cducatton ^ , ^ ^ 

ment of the faculties or powers of the mind, has 

been scientifically tested and found wanting. 
A philosophy of education can no longer be 
made out of it. When it is given up, as it must 
be, only specific education will remain, but 
specific education so rich in variety and so defi- 
nite in purpose and method that it promises 
results far better than those which the old train- 
ing gave. 

Thus at the end of fifty years of unparalleled 
progress the world waits impatiently for the 
coming of peace to begin a yet greater cycle 
of educational renewing. 



94 



A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Boone, Richard J. Education in the United States. 
D. Appleton and Company, New York. 

Brown, Elmer E. The Making of our Middle 
Schools. Longmans, Green, & Co., New York. 

Butler, Nicholas Murray (Editor). Mono- 
graphs on Education. Department of Education 
for the United States Commission to the Paris 
Exposition of 1 900. 

Carlton, Frank. "Economic Influences upon 
Educational Advance in the United States, 
1820-1850," Bulletin of the University of 
Wisconsin, 1908. 

CuBBERLY, E. p. Changing Conceptions of Edu- 
cation. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 

Finegan, Thomas E. Teacher Training Agencies. 
Eleventh Annual Report of the State Depart- 
ment of Education, Vol. II, Albany, New York. 

Hanaford, Phebe a. The Life of George Pea- 
body. B. B. Russell, Boston. 

Mann, Mrs. Mary (Editor). Life and Works of 
Horace Mann. Horace«B. Fuller, Boston. 

Martin, George H. The Evolution of the Mas- 
sachusetts Public School System. D. Appleton 
and Company, New York. 

95. 



Parker, S. C. A History of Modern Elementary- 
Education. Ginn and Company, Boston. 

Thwing, Charles F. A History of Higher Edu- 
cation in America. D. Appleton and Company, 
New York. 

Proceedings of the American Institute of Instruction. 

The Reports of the Massachusetts Board of Edu- 
cation. 

Reports of the School Committee of Boston. 

The Reports of the United States Commissioner of 
Education (particularly the earlier ones). 



96 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




005 878 299 3 ^ 



